Apple reports record profit on 14.1 million iPhone sales

Apple Inc. (AAPL) reported a record $4.31 billion in profit on $20.34 billion in revenue during its fourth quarter ending Sept. 25. The company’s profits grew 41.3% from the year-ago period and international sales accounted for 57% of Apple’s revenue during the quarter.
Apple sold 14.1 million iPhones during the quarter, up 91% from a year ago, and it sold 4.19 million iPads during the quarter.
“We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings — both all-time records for Apple,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a prepared statement. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM (Research In Motion Ltd.) sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”
Jobs joined the earning’s call for the first time in years to boast about the record numbers for the company. He also made some rather direct jabs at RIM and Google Inc. (GOOG), Apple’s two closest competitors in the smart phone space, effectively highlighting how increasingly important the company’s mobile business will be to its future growth and success.
“We think the open vs. closed is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is: What’s best for the customer? Fragmented vs. integrated. We think Android is very very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day,” he said. “Open systems don’t always win.”
Earlier in the call, Jobs took issue with Android OEMs decisions to install “proprietary user-interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user is left to figure it all out. Compare this with iPhone where every handset works the same.”
Apple said it activated an average of 275,000 iOS devices per day over the past month and there are now 300,000 apps available in the App Store.
In other news, the company said iOS 4.2 is still on target for a November release.